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Discover Freedom from Emotional Eating through Hobbies

Emotional Eating

Discover how having a hobby can help you take the first steps towards freedom from emotional eating!

The content of this blog post is taken from my podcast interview with Hobbyscool. You can listen to the podcast here:

Emotional Eating: Breaking the Cycle with Science, Psychology, and Hobbies With Rita May

How having a hobby can help with emotional eating?

Savour Life, Not Food

Having a hobby can serve as a better way of releasing stress than eating. When people are very busy and tired they need to prioritize self-care and a hobby can be a great way of spending some time to do something they enjoy.

The more you enjoy your life, the less you need to escape from it using food, alcohol, or social media. So if you have some fun hobbies, you feel better and you don’t need food as an emotional crutch.

Loneliness

Hobbies can be a good solution for loneliness too because you may meet other people engaging in the same hobby. You can do the hobby together or join online communities and make friends with people who have the same hobby.

Boredom

And if you eat because you’re simply bored, instead of using food as entertainment, you can take up a hobby or two. When you think: I don’t know what to do, maybe I should eat…, you can remind yourself that you could also practice your hobby instead.

Having an interesting hobby that you’re looking forward to doing makes boring tasks more tolerable too. You know that after finishing the boring task you can do something fun.

It can be a good reward after a stressful day as well instead of rewarding yourself with food.

Healthy distraction

Of course, hobbies can also work as a distraction from eating when you start giving up emotional and compulsive eating. When you have the urge to eat you can distract yourself and keep your hands busy with your hobby.

Distraction is actually not what I teach to my clients as a permanent solution since it’s not always possible to do (especially if you’re at work) and I also believe that it’s better to learn to feel your feelings instead of avoiding them.

We also need to find the underlying issues for emotional eating and solve those problems instead of covering them up with eating or hobbies. Because covering up is like putting a useless band-aid on an infected wound. You can’t see the wound anymore but it’s still there and it’s getting worse under that useless band-aid.

But a healthy distraction, such as a hobby, can be a good tool to start with until you develop emotional fitness and solve the underlying issue.

Planning activities you enjoy

After working with me for a while food becomes a much less important part of my clients’ lives and suddenly they have a lot of free time that they previously spent thinking about food, diets and criticising and torturing their bodies. Often when I ask them what they want to fill this time with they have no idea because they got used to spending that time researching the latest diet, planning their new meal plan or finding some magic solution. That’s why I ask them in advance to think about hobbies and activities they enjoy but don’t have time to do now so they can have a list of activities to choose from later.

Which hobbies help to reach freedom from emotional eating?

Journaling

Journaling is a relaxing hobby, to start with. When you’re struggling with some challenging emotions or are just trying to process a bad day, writing about what is happening can help improve your mood and lower stress. It also helps you process your feelings and notice patterns of behaviour that might affect your emotional state.

There are many ways journaling can help you.

Food journal to uncover your triggers

If you want to discover what triggers your emotional eating I highly recommend writing down in your food journal how you feel before and after eating, what happened before eating, how stressed you were that day, how much you slept, relationship issues, and any other factors affecting you.

I designed the free journal below for you to be able to do exactly that. You can download it here.

If you see your eating habits, your feelings around food, mealtimes, and events written in your journal, you may notice the recurring situations that cause you to overeat.

Brain dumping

Another great way of journaling is a brain dump.

This simply means you write down whatever is on your mind, and keep writing until you feel lighter. Getting those thoughts out on paper helps you release some of the tension, and you also gain a little more clarity.

Gratitude Journal

You can also write down in your journal what you’re grateful for.

You can write down 5-10 things every day. Turn this into a daily ritual that you do every morning or evening, and you will notice the difference it makes very quickly.

Exercise

Another good hobby is exercising. I’m not talking about completing a difficult fitness challenge or pushing yourself to do some extreme form of activity you hate.

Instead, find some workouts that you actually enjoy. These can help you improve your mood exponentially, and it’s good for your physical health as well.

Maybe you want to try

Walking or hiking (or skiing if possible)
Dancing
Yoga or Pilates
Weight lifting
Playing with your kids or pets
Bike riding in nature
Gardening

Meditation

Another great hobby could be meditating. There are many good meditations on YouTube and there are meditation apps too. For my clients, I make personalised meditations and brain rewiring audios to help them reprogram their minds and replace their old unhelpful beliefs (such as “I can’t do this”, “I‘m destined to be fat”, and so on) to more helpful and empowering beliefs.

Here you will find 1 video, 2 audio recordings and more than 300 written affirmations beautifully formatted on printable pages. You can either listen to or read these mantras every day to reprogram your unconscious mind around your relationship with food and your body.

Art and creativity for freedom from emotional eating through hobbies

Colouring is a nice relaxing hobby too to release stress. There are colouring books for adults too.

Art, photography, painting, playing an instrument, knitting, or learning any new skills can help release endorphins and make you feel better.

If you’re struggling with emotional eating, you don’t have to face it alone. Take the time to explore activities that can help you cope and manage your emotions in a healthier way and see how you can take the first steps towards freedom from emotional eating through hobbies.

If you need support, join my private Facebook Group and consider working with me. I have a 12-week 1 on 1 coaching program to help you eliminate emotional eating. Book a free call here if you would like to talk with me directly about your issues.

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Breaking free from the fear of failure to overcome emotional eating

Emotional Eating

How the fear of failure may manifest itself in your life

Most of my clients shared the same initial fear before we began our work together: “What if I fail?” They worried about putting in tremendous effort, only to return to square one.

Perhaps you can relate to this cycle of weight loss followed by weight gain, or the frustrating battle with overeating or binging that seems to resurface every few months.

Fear of failure might manifest itself in thoughts and feelings that getting rid of your unwanted eating habits

– is too difficult,

– takes too long,

– is impossible because you won’t have the willpower to do it,

– means that you will have to deprive yourself.

These negative thoughts and feelings will stop you either during the process or might even stop you before you get started.

From Stress to Success: How to Manage Emotional Eating for High-Achievers

Emotional Eating

Many high-achieving, successful people often face the challenge of overeating and emotional eating, even though they excel in other areas of their lives. In this blog post, I introduce the W.I.S.E.R. model as a tool to manage emotional eating for high-achievers.

From Stress to Success: How to Manage Emotional Eating for High-Achievers

You’re driven by ambition, you are a successful self-made person but often find yourself struggling when it comes to managing your relationship with food. The pressure of your demanding career, your relentless pursuit of goals, and the constant juggling of responsibilities can lead to heightened stress and overwhelming emotions. Turning to food as a means to numb or distract yourself became your go-to coping mechanism.

However, as you recognize the detrimental effects of emotional eating on your overall well-being, you want to find healthier ways to navigate intense emotions and stress.

In this blog post, I’ll introduce and dissect the W.I.S.E.R. model, offering step-by-step guidance on how to apply it when confronted with intense emotions and the urge to turn to food for comfort. It’s a great tool to manage emotional eating for high-achievers. By the end of this blog post, you will have actionable insights and practical tools to help you navigate challenging moments and cultivate a healthier approach to emotional well-being and eating habits.

Taking a deep breath can make you more anxious and stressed

Balanced Life Emotional Eating Healthy Lifestyle

Taking a deep breath to calm down may not work for you and it can make you more anxious and stressed. When it comes to breathing and anxiety, slow and steady wins the race. By focusing on extending your exhale and practising diaphragmatic breathing, you can promote feelings of relaxation and reduce stress in your body and mind.

“Taking a deep breath” to calm down is NOT what you need

As a busy, high-performing person, you often find yourself constantly on the go, with a never-ending to-do list and high expectations to meet. This can lead to feelings of overwhelm, stress, and anxiety.

To cope with these overwhelming feelings, many people turn to unhealthy coping mechanisms such as overeating, binge eating, or drinking. You may find yourself reaching for sugary snacks or junk food to help you cope with your emotions or turning to alcohol to unwind after a long day.

Unfortunately, these coping mechanisms only provide temporary relief and can lead to long-term health consequences.

One of the most common pieces of advice given to help calm anxiety and reduce stress is to “take a deep breath.” However, I recently learned that quickly taking a deep breath can actually worsen the symptoms of anxiety by upsetting the delicate balance of gases in our bodies.

Interior design to help you break free from emotional eating

Emotional Eating

Optimizing our environment (using interior design principles) is a powerful tool to help us develop new habits.

I work with my clients to change on six levels to break free from emotional and binge eating. One of the levels is their environment.

When I worked with Adriana Gómez Navarro, Holistic Interior Designer, on her eating habits, she had brilliant ideas about making small changes in her home to help her build the new eating and thinking habits I taught her.

I loved her ideas so much that I asked her to write a guest post about them so you can benefit from her tips too.

Check out her post below about how to use Interior Design to help you break free from emotional eating.

Interior Design to help you break free from emotional eating

My name is Adriana Gómez Navarro, and I am a holistic interior designer. Beyond creating beautiful spaces, my work is about well-being and designing for the changes people want to see in their lives. We shape environments, and then as we live in our spaces, the environment shapes us back.

I met Rita a couple of years ago and loved her guidance while reviewing my habits and impulses around food. We both agree that forcing new habits doesn’t work. Instead, it’s best to flow towards desired outcomes. We both help our clients look at their experience to identify, in their armour of beliefs, why they are stuck in bad habits that don’t allow them to have the life they want.

You are successful in your life but struggle with food

Emotional Eating Healthy Weight Loss

Smart, successful people, like you, despite all they’ve accomplished, sometimes can’t figure out how to stop overeating.

CEOs, entrepreneurs, professionals, researchers, physicians, lawyers, coaches, and leaders know how to solve complicated problems, lead the work of other people, win big contracts, save lives, solve legal issues, and coach other people on various topics, but they feel powerless around food.

You’re always busy, your job is stressful, you may even travel a lot, plus you raise a family. To build your career first, you may have had children later in your life. Now you’re in your late 40s or early 50s and have to face the problems associated with your busy career, perimenopause, moody teenagers and ageing parents at the same time.

The eat-to-soothe stress habit became your release.

You can read about how stress-related overeating works and how this habit forms here.

How stress-related overeating works

Emotional Eating

How stress-eating works

Acute, short-term stress decreases appetite.

However, when stress persists (chronic stress), a hormone called cortisol is released.

Cortisol increases hunger due to the imbalance of ghrelin and leptin hormones, leading to overeating.

Numerous studies show that cortisol also affects food preferences, i.e. increases cravings for foods high in sugar or fat, or both.

How to cope with emotions without food – building emotional tolerance

Emotional Eating Healthy Weight Loss

Let´s talk about feelings today. Specifically how to cope with emotions without food, i.e. how to deal with your uncomfortable feelings without eating.

As I mentioned in a previous post, emotional eating is one of the main reasons you might not be able to lose weight. You know how to eat healthily, you stick to your healthy habits most of the time but when something happens and triggers some uncomfortable feelings inside of you, you turn to food and overeat or even binge and you gain the weight back.

To prevent this from happening, you need to know what triggers these feelings and how to cope with these emotions without food.

It´s not your fault that you struggle with food, your weight, and your body image (53)

How to stop overeating when you’re stuck at home

Emotional Eating Healthy Weight Loss

Are you stuck at home and you can’t stop overeating or snacking?

When you’re stuck at home for some reason, many sources of pleasure and fun activities are removed from your life, e.g. social activities, travelling, going to restaurants, going to the gym, swimming pool, shopping, you name it.

No wonder eating has a more comforting, pleasure-giving role in your life now than it used to and this may result in eating more than usual.

Overeating when you work from home – what to do to stop it

Emotional Eating Healthy Weight Loss

Do you work from home and find yourself overeating way too often? Do you snack all afternoon and stand in front of the fridge more often than you would like to admit?

If you want to prevent weight gain and want to stop unnecessary snacking when you work from home, you need to stop for a few seconds before you eat. Ask yourself: Am I hungry?

If yes, go ahead and eat something nutritious so you won´t get hungry again in a few minutes.

No?

Take a deep breath and check in with your feelings/emotions? What do you feel? What do you think?

Magyar

FREE TRAINING

6 MISTAKES THAT MAKE YOU FEEL OUT OF CONTROL AROUND FOOD & what to do instead to break free from emotional and binge eating

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